10 All-Too Common Content Marketing Errors: Are You Making Any of These?
You’ve probably done a few crazy things in your marketing stints online, right? But, hey, we learn from our mistakes. Or we should. I’m not perfect, too, so I’ve made a list of ten very common content marketing errors that I’ve noticed that are still trending at a popular pace online. Online marketers, businesses producing content, and freelance copywriters at all stages are vulnerable to these. Know, avoid, conquer (or something to that effect). Keep reading and learn what to avoid so you can be 100% successful in your content marketing path. 10 of the Most Common Content Marketing Errors & Pitfalls 1. Giving Up Too Soon Joe Pulizzi once said that content marketing doesn’t fail due to its content quality, but rather because it is inconsistent—or it just stops. My simple advice as an avid content marketer for over five years now: never quit. And along with that: don’t expect overnight results. Achieving the below ranking took me–ready for it?–eight months. That’s right: eight months after I published this long-form piece of content (a combination of an infographic + transcript in a blog post) I saw it hit the top three results in Google. It can take a long time. But when you hit it, guess what? That wait, and that time and effort, was all worth it. In fact, consistency is the greatest way to revitalize your content marketing program that has become stagnant. This reminds me of the “don’t give up on your dreams” miner cartoon. Nothing puts it in more realistic terms (for me) than this simple visual. This exactly represents what happens when a content marketer turns away too soon: they just miss the diamond. 2. Ignoring Quality and Focusing on Quantity Quality is important for many reasons. It increases your engagement, builds trust, and promotes thought leadership. But most importantly, Google thinks quality is important. Since Google is the boss when it comes to how it ranks and who it sends to your site, it gets to make that call. To make sure Google is viewing your content favorably, look for any obvious signs of trouble: Prevent and remove any user-generated spam that appears on your site Keep an eye on your site for hacking and remove such content as soon as it appears Those are external factors. To really ensure content will achieve a high quality status, follow these easy guidelines: Create unique content Avoid keyword stuffing Make use of internal links so users can easily navigate to other content on your site Make your content trustworthy and accurate Include helpful features like key takeaways, images or videos 3. Not Marketing Your Own Content Hey, it’s called content “marketing” for a reason, right? In Neil Patel’s The Advanced Content Marketing Guide, he explains that the secret to content marketing comes down to three things: coming up with quality content, ensuring search engines find it and promoting it. If you fail to market your content, it’s never going to spread its wings and being new followers and fans, let along potential customers. 4. Your Offerings Have Become Bland Leaving your content to sit and become outdated seriously hampers its ability to attract and audience and keep them engaged. It also reflects poorly on your ability to related to readers and their current concerns or challenges. Freshen up content with these tips: Think outside the blog – experiment with new formats, such as infographics, e-books or webinars. Paint a visual – use visual imagery as instant eye-catchers. But don’t stop at the odd photo or chart. Increase interest by creating visual-centric formats such as video or SlideShare. Create conversation – content marketing works well when your audience can interact. Ask questions, make a controversial viewpoint and give readers the chance to weigh in on the discussion. 5. A Dead End to Your Storytelling “Content marketing” in itself can be misleading. You may think that the content itself actually does all the marketing work. Nothing is further from the truth: there’s no way you can just expect your readers to take in your content and instantly become engaged, loyal, paying customers. You need to guide your readers towards the next step in their purchase process or engagement, and that requires a very strong, clear call to action. Otherwise, you’ll make the worst snafu among content marketing errors: not turning your content into ROI. Readers expect to be told what to do after they have read your content. That’s the entire concept behind marketing – you want your readers to do something based on the information they have just received. If you are not including a call to action in your blogs and other content forms, start right now. That call to action doesn’t need to include a million-dollar deal. It can be as simple as signing up to your mailing list, linking to another resource that you offer or any other conversion point you want to support. Without that call to action, your content is just leading to a dead end. 6. Failing to Write in Drafts As a writer, you don’t simply sit down, pour sweat, blood and tears over your keyboard and hit the post button, right? What about typos? What about poorly constructed sentences? What if you lost your train of thought somewhere along page three? And worst of all: what if you burn yourself out in one sitting? You need time to think of your content as draft stages, so you can edit your writing. But don’t do it right away. Finish your piece and walk away. Go back and edit later when the piece is cold. You’ll view it with a fresh sense of perspective and curiosity. Sure, not all writers love editing. But think of it like this: editing can turn your “great” piece of work into a masterpiece. Hubspot offers some great editing tips here that will help. 7. Failing to Proofread A Final Time So you’ve written a blog, you’ve edited it; it’s good to go, right? Wrong. Go back and proofread it that one last time. Editing is about making those big, deep-line … Read more
